Pencils, eh
A virtual museum of the golden age of the Canadian pencil industry.
 Laurentian circa 1973, Canadiana circa 1973, Viva-Tone circa 1977 My son and I are fans of the CBC show Back in Time for Winter. The show follows a modern day family as they recreate life in Canada through several different decades (1940s to 1990s). In that spirit, I thought it would be fun to look back at the school supplies a typical Canadian student might have seen when back to school shopping in the 1970s. Colored pencils would have been a staple of back to school shopping lists. You would likely see colored pencils sets from Venus, Eagle and Dixon. The advertisement below from 1974 shows sets from each of these three companies all of which had manufacturing facilities in Canada.  Newspaper advertisement from August 18, 1974 In the early 1970s, older students would have been shopping for a slide ruler. Later in the decade, electronic calculators such as the TI-30 would become affordable. Do you have memories of shopping for school supplies in the 1970s? What was a cherished or wished for item that you had?
5 Comments
Tina Koyama
8/15/2020 02:10:14 am
Pee-Chee folders and Papermate Flair pens!
Canadiana
8/28/2021 12:03:34 pm
I found 6 unsharpened Viva Tones in a $1.99 thrift store bag yesterday…tickled!
John Sturgeon
1/12/2022 03:03:51 am
It is interesting that the above ad shows a 30-set of Laurentien pencils in 1974. On the back side of the cover insert for the Venus Canada 24-set which shows an ad for a Commodore 64 (introduced in 1982,) there is an ad for the "new" 60-set of artist colors. So did Venus Canada gradually increase the number of colors available over the years 1974-1982, and if so are there other sets out there for the gradually increasing number of colors? I've only seen one 30-set, and I've never seen any other numbered sets between 30 and 60 for that era. Just curious if you have seen any of them? The early sets of Laurentien colored pencils came in 6, 8, 12 or 24. Later sets were made in 20 or 30 pencils (as far as I am aware). The big set of 60 I believe was the latest set to be sold. I've never seen a set larger than 60... there were some pencils with numbers larger than 60 however. There was a special set of just metallic pencils... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentien_(art_supplies) 4/13/2022 05:04:41 am
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